Clergy abuse victims’ privacy ...

By Mike Mosedale
Minnesota Lawyer
September 2, 2015

http://minnlawyer.com/2015/09/02/clergy-abuse-victims-privacy-to-be-debated-in-bankruptcy-court-the-craziest-law-review-article-ever-and-a-melodrama-in-the-pennsylvania-ag-office/

Clergy abuse victims’ privacy to be debated in bankruptcy court, the craziest law review article ever, and a melodrama in the Pennsylvania AG office

In clergy sex abuse cases: Who gets to review victims’ claims?

The Wall Street Journal checks in on the latest legal jousting in U.S. Bankruptcy Court between the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and victims of clergy sex abuse.

Plaintiffs attorneys are pushing back against a request to allow as many as 1,000 additional individuals – including parish pastors, parish financial councils, board members and other lawyers – to review “the unusually detailed and intensely personal details” in the victims’ claims.

While those particulars have already been eyeballed by the archdiocese, insurance carriers, and the parishes’ bankruptcy lawyers, Mary Jo. A. Jensen-Carter – a lawyer representing a group of parishes – said in court papers that it is “imperative that individuals governing the parish be involved in the process of analyzing the claims.”

Judge Robert Kressel is expected to take up the matter at a hearing in Minneapolis tomorrow.

West Point law prof jumps the shark, quits

Did you hear about that 180-page law review article in which the author argues that legal critics of the war on terror “can be targeted at any time and place and captured and detained until termination of hostilities?”

Well, astonishingly, there has been some blow back.

Yesterday, William Bradford resigned his teaching post at the United States Military Academy at West Point in the wake of the furor over his article, Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column in the National Security Law Journal

In a post at Above the Law (headlined: “Law Journal Apologizes For Article About Executing Law Professors”) Joe Patrice recounts the particulars with relish.

“How bats**t crazy was this article? The National Security Law Journal has apologized for ever publishing it!” Patrice writes. Despite Bradford’s resignation, Patrice says another question remains unanswered: why did West Point hire him in the first place, given that Bradford was previously squeezed out of a post at the University of Indiana law school for fudging the details about his military service and, well, a bunch of other stuff.

Writes Patrice:

“Frankly, this should be disqualifying for a job at West Point. Stolen valor may be constitutional, but it’s something an American service academy should probably frown upon. And yet this isn’t the only deception in Bradford’s past. Like the disingenuous way he described his “tenure denial” — he hadn’t come up for tenure yet, or his claim that he secured restraining orders against other faculty members at Indiana that turned out to be fabrications.”

Can Pennsylvania AG do her job if she loses her law license?

The ABA Journal checks in on a legal/political melodrama in Pennsylvania that sure makes Minnesota seem boring.

Supporters of embattled Attorney General Kathleen Kane have launched a petition drive to stave off a possible suspension of her law license until a related criminal investigation – dubbed “Porngate” — is concluded.

From the story:

“Kane, the first Democrat and the first woman to be elected to the office, is facing a felony case for allegedly leaking secret grand jury information to the press in order to embarrass a political rival. Whether being suspended from law practice would, in fact, force her from office is unclear, legal experts tell the Associated Press. It appears that she could continue to perform some, but not all, of the duties of her office even without a law license.”